Challenges of functional neurological disorder
Your recent article on functional neurological disorder shed welcome light on a common, disabling and distressing condition (6 April, p 28). But, as patients and health professionals who participated in the article, we felt let down and upset by the choice of titles in the printed version: “Mind over matter – How you can think yourself sick… and well again” and “Mind tricks”.
These imply old-fashioned ideas of “imaginary” or “made-up” illness purely in the domain of the mind, not modern ideas that include a brain perspective, which the article discussed. They suggest, wrongly, that patients can easily think themselves out of their symptoms. It is a challenge to develop non-dualistic language to navigate the fine line dividing fact from stigmatising stereotypes.
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Why do we tolerate the internet of broken things?
Chris Stokel-Walker describes the nightmare of not being able to make a cup of tea while your kettle updates itself (11 May, p 23). This does raise an important question: why do we put up with things that are so badly engineered that they need fixes after we have bought them?
A bicycle maker that had to visit your house to fit new wheels would soon go out of business. So why do we put up with this for software-controlled gadgets? Isn't every vital update admitting poor design?
This looks like evidence of Chinese snooping
You say there is no evidence that Chinese network equipment firm Huawei has mishandled data (4 May, p 11). But, for example, reported last year that equipment installed in the Chinese-built headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, transmitted data every night from midnight to 2 am to servers in Shanghai. then reported that after this was discovered, Huawei servers in the building were replaced.
Another mystery of that first black hole picture
You discuss big questions that we still must answer after making the first image of a black hole system (20 April, p 6). One of the mysteries, for me, is how the shadow of the black hole appears. I realise that the halo of radiation around the black hole itself is asymmetrical because of the rotation of the accretion disc. But how does the shadow of the black hole step out in front? Would the image still be black in the middle if seen from other angles?
The editor writes:
The researchers clarify that any gas in front of the black hole produces some light that reaches us, but the current set-up can detect only that it is 10 times dimmer than the ring. Also, we are looking almost down the axis of the accretion disc – the best estimate is 17 degrees off the pole.
The extraordinary energy of a 1-gram star probe
You report a plan to send a swarm of 1-gram devices towards Alpha Centauri at 20 per cent of light speed (13 April, p 32). Each will have kinetic energy equivalent to half a kiloton of TNT explosive, comparable to a small nuclear device. Any entity on the receiving end may get the wrong message.
Getting rid of small change is a step to surveillance
You mark the UK down for keeping small coins that may carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria (11 May, p 21). But this is a step towards a cashless society. This would harm older people, poor people and those without bank accounts and would move us closer to total state-monitoring of our transactions, with the potential for forced arbitrary taxation.
The exciting future of ageing research (1)
Graham Lawton, discussing ways to mitigate the effects of ageing, mentions the effect of young blood (27 April, p 26). There must be many older people who have received total or near-total blood transfusions of younger blood as a result of life-saving treatment. Do they show signs of significant rejuvenation?
The exciting future of ageing research (2)
It isn’t often that I find myself purchasing a publication based solely on a particular article. Your piece on a cure for ageing was an exception. One day, “old age” will be vitally different to our current perceptions of it. It was nice to see big names in the field mentioned, but I was a tad disappointed to see no reference to Aubrey de Grey, author of Ending Ageing. It was still a great piece that will spread awareness that curing ageing is no longer just about charlatans and snake oil.
The exciting future of ageing research (3)
My wife Valerie saw your cover announcement of “a cure for ageing” and said “yeah: die!” Perhaps her scepticism is rooted in her years of work in the pharmaceutical industry.
These batteries are not as shocking as all that
I applaud your series on becoming a maker (How to be a maker, 11 May). We are in danger of forgetting the basics. But to imply that you can get a painful shock from a 9-volt battery is absurd – unless you connect it to your teeth, or have a coil with large inductance in the circuit. And you won't get much heat or damage from shorting a 9-volt battery, you'll just run it down fast.
Hannah Joshua writes:
Yes, shorting a 9-volt alkaline battery is not that bad, but doing the same to a lithium battery, for instance, could be dangerous. And it is important that everyone understands not to make themselves part of the circuit. When they make bigger things, it could be a lot more unpleasant.
For the record 鈥� 01 June 2019
鈥� David Grimaldi says he bought 75 kilograms of raw amber, not the 3600 kilograms reported by the mining company (4 May, p 38).
鈥� In our puzzle about numbers in alphabetic order, the second-last is two trillion two thousand two hundred and two (Puzzles, 11 May).